Sermon Tone Analysis
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The book of Romans is the most theologically rich Book in all of Scripture.
The apostle Paul is writing to Gentile believers in Rome.
These people are new, Not only to Christianity, but to the one true and living God in general.
He begins the book by talking about the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, and he explains that no one is free from guilt before God.
Many Jews thought coming Messiah would come only for them.
They were looking for a political Messiah that would free them from Roman oppression.
The Jews thought that since they were a part of God’s people from an ethnic standpoint, that they were automatically included as the children of God.
However, Paul explains in chapter 2 different law condemns the Jews just like it does the Gentiles.
And in chapter 3 he reiterates the point that the Law condemns both Jews and Gentiles alike.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
He goes on to explain that we are not justified by our works, but we are justified by faith alone.
In chapter 4 he points out that the Old Testament saints were not justified because of their works, but they were justified by their faith.
And that takes us up to chapter 5 in which the apostle explains the results of our justification in Christ.
Over the next three weeks sermons will be geared toward answering this question: what does a Resurrection mean to me?
The answer to that question from Romans chapter 5:6-11 is that God loves you when you were unlovable.
In these few versus the apostle Paul lays before us our individual identities apart from Christ.
Following that he explains what Christ did to remedy that on our behalf, and he also makes sure that we understand the implications that has for each of us.
Let’s talk for a minute about your identity before Christ - Unlovable.
My Identity Before Christ - Unlovable
The apostle Paul was never one to be accused of soft-pedaling the gospel.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
Soft peddling the gospel is what you hear so often in our world today.
It’s talking about how God loves you just as you are, and he’s okay with your sin as long as you’re happy.
In fact, if you’re truly soft-pedaling the gospel, you’re not even going to mention sin.
You’ll talk about God’s love, God’s forgiveness, and how God wants the best for you.
And all of those things are true.
God does love you.
He will forgive.
And he does want the best for you.
But he gets determined what is the best for you.
It’s his standard, not yours.
And that is where the problem comes in.
We live in a day and age where no one is willing to be told they are wrong.
No one wants to be told that what he thinks or what she believes is incorrect.
No one wants to be told their behavior or actions are wrong.
We live in a day and age where people want to believe that as long as you do more good than bad and as long as you’re nice to others, you’ll go to heaven when you die.
In fact, there’s very little, if any, talk of a literal place called hell today.
One of the great dangers of living in the Bible Belt is that churches are jam packed with people who have no mark of being Christians on their lives other than the fact that they attend church once a week, if that.
No obedience, whatsoever.
No desire for obedience.
No relationship with Christ.
No seriousness about God.
This is it.
You’ll come to church, you’ll check the box, and you’ll call yourself a Christian.
And I want to lovingly tell you that if there is no obedience, no desire for obedience to the Word of God, then you should not count yourself as a Christian.
You should consider yourself lost, and in danger of damnation.
And some of you may be thinking that’s a little harsh, but how cruel would it be for me to simply pat you on the back and let you continue to be deceived when damnation is at stake.
In describing our identity before Christ, the apostle Paul lays bare before us who we really are.
He describes us in four different ways in this passage.
He begins in verse 6 by saying that we were helpless.
The most helpless being on the planet, oddly enough, is a human baby.
They can’t walk.
They can’t talk.
They can’t defend themselves, and they can’t flee from danger.
In fact, they don’t even know what danger is until they are taught.
They are completely helpless, and left on their own they would quickly die.
That’s the image Paul is conveying about you and me, about all of humanity, in our natural state.
In 3:23 Paul says that we have all sinned.
In chapter 6 he will explain that the sin, which we have committed, deserves punishment.
And we are helpless.
We’re helpless to avoid sinning, and we’re helpless to atone for our sins.
Paul goes on to say in verse 6 that, not only are we helpless, but we are also ungodly.
If you tell someone they’re helpless, they may not get too offended.
But try telling them they’re ungodly.
You’ll get called judgmental, self-righteous, and a host of other names.
But that’s the exact description that Paul gives.
Again, what Paul is saying about us is that we are separated from God by our sins.
The next descriptor Paul uses is found in verse 8. Sinners.
You are a sinner.
I am a sinner.
That is our identity apart from Christ.
Thursday morning before I left to come to the office I used the words “no” and “stop” and “get down” and “put that back” what seemed like a thousand times; although, I’m sure it wasn’t more than 5 or 600 times.
Every time I turned around, and many times right in front of my face, my precious, sweet baby boy was doing whatever he wanted, even though he knew what he was doing was wrong.
That is an excellent description of you and me.
We are sinners.
We’re born that way.
You’re not a sinner because you sin; you sin because you are a sinner.
We’re stopping at verse 11 today, but if you read verses 12 and following, later on, you’ll see that Paul says we are born with a sin nature because of Adam.
Our sins make us guilty before God.
But they make us more than just guilty before God.
The last mark that Paul uses to describe our identity apart from Christ, which is found in verse 10, is that, in our natural state, we are enemies of God.
In Colossians 1:21 Paul says that those without Christ are alienated from God, hostile towards him, and engaged in evil deeds.
In Ephesians 2:3 he calls those without Christ “children of wrath.”
You do not want to be the enemy of God.
Jesus said that we don’t need to be afraid of man who can kill only the body, but, rather, we need to fear God who can kill both the body and the soul.
Again, you won’t see Paul soft-peddling the gospel.
Listen again to what he is saying about the identity those who have not repented of their sins and placed their faith in Christ, and, therefore, have no personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
You are helpless.
You are ungodly.
You are a sinner.
And you are the enemy of God.
If we are ungodly sinners who are the enemies of God and helpless to change that fact, then we need someone else to come in and help us out, or we’ll have to add hopeless to that list of characteristics.
Our identity before Christ is unlovable.
So what changed?
John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.
Did something change that made us go from unlovable to lovable?
The answer is actually no.
And that is the remarkable and beautiful truth of the Gospel.
Paul tells us our identity before Christ, but he also tells us the actions of God in Christ.
The Actions of God in Christ
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